The Price of War - Chapter Five

[morethanhonour]

More Than Honour
Book One: The Price of War
Chapter Five

“Virtues! To arms! We’re taken!”

The bosun’s shout and the crack of a pistol roused any last remaining sense of sleep from Edward’s mind. Two bells, he knew, had been struck some time ago. It must still be the middle watch, for a whole watch could not have passed since then. Just as he rolled out of his hammock, his knees sore from contact with the deck, the door of the cabin flew open. He grabbed his pistol from its place atop his sea chest, pulled the hammer back into the cocked position, and fired at the man coming in. The man, dressed in a French officer’s uniform, staggered, clutching the wound in his chest. Without thinking, Edward dove forward. He grabbed his sword and had it out of its sheath in the time it took him to take one breath. The edge of the sword sliced across the officer’s throat in the next instant, and his blood sprayed all over Edward. The acting-lieutenant had sense enough to tug on his trousers, but he went without his shoes. From the dead man, he took the loaded pistol while his free hand fastened the necessary buttons on his trousers to keep them up.

Immediately upon leaving the cabin, Edward had to parry a sword strike from a Frenchman. Not an officer, he noted as he clubbed the man with the grip of his stolen pistol. He had no time to contemplate how there were prisoners free. Another man was entering his sight, sword raised. He fell after a crack sounded. Someone had shot him from behind, somewhere deeper in the berth deck, where the fighting was more fierce.

“Don’t let a one more of ‘em get up to the guns!” Church cried.

Edward stepped over a body dressed in the blue Royal Navy coat and met another Frenchman in sword combat. The man went for the dagger at his hip, but Edward saw the movement. He pulled his pistol’s hammer and brought the trigger back. as the man fell, Edward again helped himself to his enemy’s gun.

He mounted the companionway, slamming his sword through the man who met him’s chest. He tossed the boy down the stairs before springing onto the gun deck. The melee continued there, and Edward looked at the closed door of the captain’s cabin. A thousand indignities sprang to mind: watching Caldwell and the Leroux girl-- she had ceased to deserve acknowledgement of her Christian name in Edward’s mind-- walk the deck, the sight of her sunning herself on the quarterdeck, the increasing liberty Leroux then his officers then his men had enjoyed due to her entreaties through Clay to the captain. Equal parts rage and concern battled within Edward as he tried the door. It opened.

The captain was not in his day cabin nor his sleeping quarters. His absence was a relief. In the latter, though, Edward found the Leroux girl huddled in a corner, dressed in only her shift. She began to screech when their eyes met. She wept and sobbed and screamed as he grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. If it had been within his power to break her arm under his hold, Edward would have confessed to the desire to do so. As it was, he dragged her from the room, sheathing his sword and all but shoving her in front of him as a kind of human shield. These Frenchmen, he was sure, would not harm their captain’s daughter. He forced her along the companionway, up to the main deck. She continued to shriek, writhing and trying to scratch him. Edward brought the back of his hand still holding his pistol across her face.

On the quarterdeck, Mader was engaged with in combat with Leroux. Edward’s chest ached at the inevitable meaning of such a thing. When he reached the helm with his prize he saw what he had feared. There was his captain, staring at the overcast night sky with his gray eyes unfocused. Blood stained his waistcoat and soaked the deck all around him. Edward stood frozen, Marie and Leroux and Mader all forgotten. He shook for a moment before the din of battle roared back around him and the colours of the scene splashed vividly all about. He pulled Marie before him and twisted her arm behind her.

“Leroux!” His voice ripped his throat raw from the inside out. The French captain looked over in time to see Edward cock his pistol and put the muzzle to the girl’s temple. She screamed anew. “Throw down your sword!” That the man knew no English was not a thought that troubled Edward. “Surrender, or I swear to God, I’ll shoot her! Damn it, I will!”

His words meant little. His actions made his intentions clear. Leroux parried a thrust from Mader; the Frenchman was the superior swordsman by far. As Leroux pulled his pistol, Edward stared. Did the man intend to sword-fight and attempt to shoot a man with his daughter in front of him at the same time? Edward tried to feel sure that it was a bluff, yet he felt he could be sure of nothing now. Leroux aimed the pistol, and the crack of a shot rang out. Marie let out a blood-curdling scream, like a creature in its death throes, but it was Leroux who fell. Behind him, Clay stood.

His sword arm hung at his side, bloody and likely useless. His left hand held his pistol, which had been pressed into the hollow of Leroux’s skull when he pulled the trigger. Blood and brains spattered the first lieutenant-- now the acting-captain. Mader stared, standing like a man in a dream as he tried to take in everything going on all about him.

Edward released his howling charge, and she fell to her knees, sobbing. He took no notice of her but rather stared between Mader and Clay, gaze flickering from one to the other and back again. Clay had, likely, saved Mader as much as, if not more than, he had saved Edward. Despite the silence of the two men, a conversation flowed between the two men. The sounds of battle died away on the main deck and then the decks below as word of Leroux’s death spread the chill of defeated through the remaining Frenchmen.

Finally, Clay dared to speak. “Your orders, sir?”

“What?” Mader replied.

“Captain Caldwell is dead, sir,” Edward managed. He indicated the body of the man with a nod. “You’re-- You’re captain now, sir. What are you orders?”

Mader gathered his senses. “Mister Clay, go below. See to the wounded with Mister Moore. Send a report within the hour.” It struck Edward as significant that he did not wish Clay to leave the sick bay to report personally. That he would prefer a messenger suggested to the acting-lieutenant that the senior officer preferred the idea of Clay assisting the surgeon, of him seeing to the wounded himself.

“Aye aye, sir,” Clay replied. He even remembered to salute before he quit the quarterdeck.

Mader’s eyes turned to Edward. “Mister Burr. Find Mister Booth. I want a course set for Gibraltar at once. After that, see the prisoners placed in irons.”

“Aye aye, sir.” With a touch of his hat, Edward followed Clay’s path, replaced by British seamen collecting the dead. Edward watched from the main deck as the men lifted the body of Caldwell. They might well have been tasked with carrying the king for all the care and reverence they put into their handling. As they took him below, an Irish crew member they passed lowered his head and cross himself piously. Edward swallowed hard, spared one more glance for the weeping girl still on the quarterdeck, and went below.

The course was set and the prisoners taken to the hold, back to their confinement. The whole process took only two hours, and Edward wandered the ship after it was done. There would be no sleep tonight, he knew. At times, the whole affair seemed like a nightmare. He felt as if he ought to wake in his hammock, thrashing about. He would run to the captain’s cabin, fling open the door and be admonished by a laughing Caldwell for having entered without knocking. Yet the very next instant he felt ill with the memory of his captain’s blood pooled on the quarterdeck. He staggered but caught himself before the sickness was too much.

Morning found every man on the muster list of Virtue turned out. The men wore the best clothes they had, and all the officers had put on their dress uniforms. Every face was somber. The bodies of the dead crew were laid out on the deck, every corpse sewn up in his hammock. Mader stood near the side of the ship, two men behind him, one on either side of a wide, smooth plank of wood. A book from the captain’s cabin sat open in his hands. He read from it in a low, steady voice. “We therefore commit their bodies to the deep to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead.” The first two wrapped bodies were placed on the board and covered with a British flag. Each man held a corner of the flag. “Jeremy Nichols, carpenter’s mate. Logan Knox, surgeon’s mate.” The board was tilted, the bodies fell into the sea, and the water stilled over their new grave. The next two were placed. “Michael Winters, master’s mate. Geoffrey Martin, bosun’s mate.” After they were committed, one body was set on the plank. “Gregory Moore, surgeon.” The worship with which the last body was raised was evident. Mader’s voice gave out on his first attempt and cracked on his second. “Henry Caldwell, captain.”

After the splash, Mader began a prayer. Every man’s voice came to join the Lord’s Prayer, and a cool breeze filled the sails of the ship.

Virtue made her way toward Gibraltar with all the speed she dared. With prisoners who had attempted once already to take the ship, an uneasy crew, two dozen wounded, six midshipman, one acting-lieutenant and an unsure acting-captain, she did not dare to tarry. The sailing master and his remaining mate kept the junior officers in line and diligently applied to their studies. Burr saw little of Mader personally. When he paced the quarterdeck, he was granted the Olympian regard which a captain was due by right.

One evening he stood alone, his spyglass held to his eye and trained on the horizon. Edward felt a pang of sympathy for the man, isolated by a bullet in the midst of action. He had been given no time to prepare himself for the step from man to god which very soul who went from being a lieutenant to master and commander of a ship took. He seemed a smaller man than Edward remembered, dwarfed by his new responsibilities and the shadow of the man whom he had no choice but to try and replace. He lowered the glass, twisting it about in his hands, then raised it again. Edward looked out over the empty ocean and said a prayer that no more trouble would find them on their limp back to a friendly port.

For his part, Clay rarely left his dominion. He took command over the sick bay with unsettling ease, as if he had only been wanting for the opportunity. He claimed a man rated ordinary seaman, Miles Roe, as his mate and saw to every patient in turn every watch of every day. A powder monkey, one of the very young boys gone to sea for lack of any other future, served as his liaison with the new captain, running messages between the two at all hours of the day and night. When Edward saw the promoted surgeon, it was between the man’s ceaseless work, his hands forever stained with the blood of his shipmates. He spoke even less often, and his voice was much softer. There was a tension about him, and he started at every thud of rope or chain, his long fingers flexing, ready always to go to the pistol at his hip. Edward wondered more than once whether the man’s nerves would recover and make a proper naval surgeon of him or whether a treacherous French girl had destroyed him for that capacity.

If she had, Edward thought on the rare occasions when he thought of the girl locked in the first lieutenant’s cabin, fed only hardtack and given only water to drink, he hoped she would suffer for it.